Putting Children on the Express Lane to Health Insurance: Streamlining Enrollment and Renewal of Children in Medicaid and CHIP Through Express Lane Eligibility

Oct 02, 2009

Express Lane Eligibility (ELE) is a new tool available to states to streamline enrollment and renewal of children in Medicaid and CHIP. It allows state Medicaid and CHIP agencies to utilize data and eligibility findings from other public need-based programs, such as Head Start or Food Stamps, and/or tax return data to identify, enroll and recertify children rather than requiring them to re-analyze and determine eligibility under their own rules.

A primary goal of this and other outreach and simplification initiatives authorized by the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 is to reach the 7 in 10 uninsured children who are already eligible for Medicaid and CHIP. The briefs in this series, which are jointly produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and The Children’s Partnership, provide an overview of Express Lane Eligibility and examine key issues related to implementing an ELE initiative.